


A Wish Your Heart Makes

by Omnicat



Series: Pumpkin Spice Lemons [2]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consensual Somnophilia, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Impregnation, Incubus Garcia Flynn, Incubus/Succubus-Typical Consent Issues, Lemon, Porn With Plot, Pre-Canon, Pregnant Sex, Prophetic Dreams, Succubi & Incubi, Succubus Lorena Flynn, Temporary Future Canonical Child Death, They're The Good Guys But Dream Morality Isn't 1:1 Human Morality, brief Flynn-as-Noah/Lucy dream sex, brief Lorena-as-Jessica/Wyatt dream sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26934106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: Incubus Flynn and succubus Lorena dream a baby into being.
Relationships: Flynn & Lorena & Iris, Lorena/Flynn
Series: Pumpkin Spice Lemons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946326
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	A Wish Your Heart Makes

They were ephemeral creatures, dreams. The fleeting imaginings of a rare species with rarer gifts of creation. Made and unmade in the course of a single night, or even a mere nap. Intangible, elusive – but there.

And alive, in their own way. Just barely. Just for a little while.

Sometimes, just long enough.

Human cells became human beings by dividing into more and more cells; dreams became dream beings like snowflakes became snowballs. The ones that lingered beyond their first dream, the ones that recurred in a similar enough form enough times, they tumbled into one another mid-fall, and then into another, and another, until finally they landed on a white hill at just the right angle and rolled down it, picking up more pieces all the way. Gathered them up and accumulated gravity and momentum, pressing them together into something bigger and heavier. Too much sun too soon, and they would still vanish like they’d never been there at all; but given enough time and enough snow, they inevitably picked up consciousness and self-awareness and autonomy somewhere along the way. Stopped being figments of the human imagination and became _beings_. Forces with minds and wills of their own.

What happens when your dreams stop wanting the same things your subconscious wants?

Nothing, per se. But anything _could_ happen. And as the annals of flesh and blood people all across the globe and all through the millennia attested, just about anything _did_ happen, given the opportunity.

_For no particular reason, the dream was set in a shopping mall. The dreamer and the succubus raced through the shopping crowds, running from neither-of-them-knew-what. They hid between the bodies on an escalator, ducked into a perfume shop, and found their way into an office with doors that locked. The doors, in fact, then refused to_ un _lock, so they wound up huddled together on the floor in a corner._

It’s safe here, _the dreamer said, and pawed at the succubus’s clothes. The succubus drew his body over hers, and pleasure bloomed where they joined._

_“Found you,” a new voice stage-whispered above them._

_The dreamer curled protectively around the succubus. She was_ his _friend, not this other man’s. He wanted to finish what they started._

_But the succubus looked at the newcomer around the dreamer’s shoulder, distracted. There was something different about him._

_He ran his hand down the dreamer’s spine and went down on one knee, unbuttoning his fly. Much better. The dreamer whimpered eagerly, pushing his hips back. The new figure pressed forward and buried himself inside the dreamer. The pleasure was so great it reached even the succubus. The three of them moved in a tangle of bodies and arousal, a knot of desire with no questions asked._

_“Good catch,” the succubus said to the second character the dreamer had conjured._

_He looked up in surprise. Their eyes met. Realization clicked in both of them._

_“You’re not from this dream,” the other – an incubus – said. “You got sucked into it from elsewhere, like I was.”_

_The succubus shook her head. “That doesn’t happen to me anymore. I felt this dream’s need for an extra player and chose to come of my own volition.”_

_“That’s possible?” The incubus’s eyes went wide._

_“Should be. We can leave this dream at any time, too. Give it a try.”_

No, _the dreamer moaned._ Don’t go. Wait for me, I’m almost there.

_They looked at each other over the dreamer’s shoulder as they fucked and were fucked by him. He awoke as his physical body abruptly came. The office around them faded slowly, but he was gone from one moment to the next. With no third body sandwiched between them, the incubus collapsed over the succubus._

_“Wait,” he said. “I didn’t get to...”_

_“Next time,” she said._

_“Will there be a next time?”_

_She frowned. Of course there would be a next time. There was_ always _a next dream._

_“It’s been so long since I met another like us, I hardly remember the last time.”_

_Oh._

_“I’m sure there will be,” the succubus said as she felt herself, too, fade from the dream. “We just have to want it.”_

His last look in their previous shared dream was much the same as his first look in their next: fascination and awe and wonder.

The succubus could relate. On some level, she’d always known she was not the only one of her kind, but she’d never met another before him. When the incubus wasn’t in the very next dream she grabbed onto, she went looking for others the way she’d learned to look for good dreams to share. Found them, too. She found beings just barely coherent enough to be called beings, beings so real they seemed almost human – or almost feline or equine or be-not-afraid angelic or however else they’d been dreamed up – found geriatric-seeming ones and childlike ones, hostile ones who turned every dream they entered into a nightmare and helpful ones who sought out dark dreams to soothe.

There were so many of them, _like_ them, coming and going all the time, but also staying and connecting. And the succubus loved meeting them all equally, loved brushing unfamiliar hands and shoulders and coming away with new pieces of herself, but she’d made a promise to the incubus she intended to keep. So before long, she found him again.

He smiled brightly at her, his body’s features undecided but his expression unmistakable, and she beamed back.

The succubus found him again eventually, and once she did, they never quite got around to separating a second time. They didn’t want to. It was harder to find dreams with room for both of them, so they didn’t always dream together. But they always reunited right after.

Forever staying in motion didn’t matter so much anymore, though. Together, they were _more_ than they had been apart. Not to the point of them merging into one, as young, unformed dreams tended to do. They were too solidly different, and had been for a long time before they met; he decidedly a male figure, she a female form, their minds compatible but clearly distinct. But they were a pair now, bound together by a mutual desire to keep the other close, and they didn’t seem to need human minds to tether them to existence quite so much anymore now that they were doing it to each other.

They imagined a bedroom for themselves to ‘wake up’ in whenever a human dream ended. A soft bed with summery sheets, knitted blankets or a handmade quilt, a fluffy duvet or a pile of furs. A wardrobe sometimes, or a vanity table. Or both. Books or a tv, occasionally, though there wasn’t much fun in the runny flashes and half-formed memories that were all they could dredge up of the stories real people told. Making things up themselves and exchanging their ever-evolving thoughts was much more entertaining and fulfilling.

He would sit up against the headboard, and she would lay her head in his lap, and they’d just talk, and dream. In their own way.

“I’m Garcia. Do you have a name?” he asked one night.

“No.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “But you’re not the first to ask me that. I like Lorena. I think I’ll be called Lorena.”

He smiled. “Hello, Lorena.”

She smiled back. “Hello, Garcia.”

“Are we real, you think?” she asked one night.

“Not really.” He grinned cheekily. “Does it matter?”

“Not really.” She smiled back. “I’ve never had to be real to _be_. You’ve never had to be real for me to love you. It’s just... there are so many things out there that we only get glimpses of in here. The longer I exist, the more bits and pieces we get, the more I find myself wanting to experience the whole. Myself. Not through the sleeping minds of strangers. _As myself._ ”

He looked thoughtful. “The minds we pass through are strangers?”

“They are to me.” Her hand found his, and squeezed. “Ever since we met, anyone who isn’t you has been a stranger.”

“Huh. I’d never thought of it like that before,” he said. “It seems obvious that I know them like they know themselves when I’m in their minds, but then, that’s how their dreams always work, isn’t it? You don’t question what you dream.”

She nodded. “We know them, but they don’t know us. They don’t even remember us when we come back.”

“One did,” Garcia said wistfully. “But I’m sure even she wouldn’t recognize me now. It’s been so long. So much. You’re right. I just never realized there was a distinction to be made between strangers and not-strangers...”

“...until it was in front of me,” Lorena finished. “I never realized I was _me_ before I did either.”

He stroked her hair fondly. “Do you ever think back to what you used to be and everything you’ve become since, and marvel?”

“I’d rather not,” she said. She reached up to caress his cheek, and smiled. “I prefer to look toward the future.”

“Yeah? Tell me about this future.”

He grinned down at her. She made an indulgent tut-tut face up at him.

“It’s not one, set future. The possibilities are endless.”

“Hm. You’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

“As usual, yes. We better make a list of what we want to become and the lives we want to live first, then. Endless is going to take a long time.”

**– 1**

_A crowd dressed to the nines, in a backyard decorated like a fairytale. White chairs in a semi-circle in the grass. A path outlined in flower petals cutting through them, bending around a swimming pool strewn with lilies on its way from the patio of a beautiful white house to the center of attention. An arch of fluttering gauze and pale pink roses._

_Music started playing. Those gathered turned eyes toward the house. And sitting closest to the arch were..._ them. _Garcia and Lorena. But not as they were now. They were flesh-and-blood people in a crowd full of flesh-and-blood people. Their hair was greying and their faces were lined._

_And they looked utterly, indescribably happy._

_But even more than that, proud. Proud at the beautiful young woman coming down the flower path toward them. She was wearing a white dress and carrying a bouquet of irises. She beamed at them in passing. They beamed back, tears in their eyes._

_The young woman took her place on one side of the arch, and the music changed, and a second bride emerged from the house. She came to a stop opposite her intended, and the women clasped hands as a minister stepped forward._

_Lorena and Garcia held onto each other throughout the entire ceremony, their eyes never leaving their daughter._

They came awake slowly, groggily, and then sharply, all at once.

“Did you see that?” she asked, while he asked, “Whose dream was that?”

They stared at each other in wonder.

“It was ours,” he realized.

“Our future,” she breathed. “If we want it.”

“ _Do_ you want it?” he asked, but didn’t wait for her to answer. “I want to be a father, Lorena. Not just for a night here and there, now and then, when I find a sleeping child in need of one. I want to be a father for a lifetime.”

“All the best and worst dreams I’ve been were about children,” she mused. “I’ve thought about motherhood in the past. I’ve wondered. But it always seemed like something for real people. After this dream, though... do you think it’s possible for us?”

“The way I see it, if it’s possible for _us_ to exist, anything is possible. We can exist, we can know and think and feel, we’re dreams who have developed the ability to dream for ourselves!” He laughed and waved his arms, incredulous and amazed. “There has to be a way.”

She ran her hands through her hair and studied her arms. “I know what I said, but I’ve never been sure it would _really_ lead to anything. But we get more real every day, don’t we?”

“Exactly!” he said excitedly. “What am I wearing?”

“Pyjamas. Dark red pants, dark red and blue striped top.” She hesitated. “Am _I_ wearing anything?”

“You always are, these days,” he assured her, cupping her cheek.

“Pink top with a purple flower, purple pants with pink flowers?”

“Yep.”

“What did I look like, in the dream?” she asked breathlessly. “What color were my eyes?”

“Blue,” he said. He could drown in them right then and there. “The most striking blue. Curly hair. Dark blonde. Almost falling over one eye. You were... you _are_ beautiful. You have the most gorgeous smile in the world.”

“That’s not true, because _you_ have the most beautiful smile in the world. I saw it,” she whispered, smilingly conspiratorial, and pulled him up against her, her hands roaming his face. “Black hair. A deep brown in the sun. Greying at the temples. Parted right here. Almond-shaped eyes...”

“Green?”

“I thought grey, but I’ve never been clear on the difference.” Lorena closed her eyes, pressed her forehead to his. “She had your eyes, Garcia.”

“She had your hair,” he whispered, his own eyes slipping closed.

She _would_ have her hair and his eyes. Their daughter. Their great, incredible dream. She wouldn’t stay just a dream, just a yearning thought. They’d find a way to bring her to life. To make her as real as they were, and then realer still.

**– 2**

How do you make a baby when one has no eggs and the other has no sperm? When you’re both straddling the line between real and not real, and neither of you is a living creature in the conventional sense of the word?

The same way you accomplish anything else: you dream it.

“Sleep,” Lorena murmured, passing a hand over Garcia’s eyes, and he slept.

He looked beautiful asleep. So real and human. And one of these days, his features would settle and be his for good.

She pressed her forehead to his, let part of herself fall into his slumber with him, _and took in the surroundings of his dream. They were standing beside a large bed in a spacious room, decked out in crisp whites and rich reds. Rose petals were strewn everywhere. Two kissing towel swans sat atop the covers. Champagne and strawberries and chocolates were set out on the table._

_“I recognize this. It’s a honeymoon suite,” Lorena said, smiling, and Garcia swept her into his arms and kissed her._

You know what they say, _he said._ First love, then marriage, then the baby carriage.

The other part, meanwhile, pulled his pyjama bottoms down his hips. She ran her hands down his thighs, taking in the firmness, the warmth, the intricate detail of body hair. There was the penis, soft and floppy against his thigh, and the testicles, in their wrinkly skin. Dreams were a blur. Crystal clear in fits and starts, but as soon as the sleeper’s untethered mind wandered elsewhere, everything else turned back to a haze. Details were rare when impressions of familiarity worked just as well. So Lorena couldn’t help but wonder if this was really what human genitalia looked like, or if they were just using their own patchwork imaginations to fill in the blanks left by thousands of minds with no need for specifics.

One thing was certain, though: between the two of them, they had everything they needed to conceive a child.

She lifted the velvety-smooth shaft in hand and petted it. The almost-real Garcia didn’t stir. His eyes remained closed and his face smooth and lax. But in his dream, _he herded her towards the big bed, kissing her all the while. They toppled into sheets as soft and fluffy as clouds. Rose petals swirled around them. Laughing, he pulled at her clothes, and she at his._

He slowly grew bigger and firmer beneath her touch; soon hard enough to stand. She licked her hand and wrapped his erection in a firm grip. The waking her pumped him, and _the her in his dream threw her head back to give him access to her neck. He kissed down the column of her throat, her sternum, between her breasts, down her stomach. It was flat_ in both worlds, and possibly always would be. But physically or no, they were going to make that baby tonight. Together. Together they had enough dreams and realities and sheer, undiluted desire to make three out of two. She could feel it. _He reached the junction of her legs, mouthing at her sex, and arousal spread through her whole body._

The dream made her waking pleasure easy. The realer they became, the fussier their bodies seemed get. The changes never stopped, and never stopped amazing her. But this was what they were born from, what they were made of. If they could dream it, they could make it happen. So Garcia was still but for the rise and fall of his chest, and yet the fervor of his kisses warmed a trail up and down Lorena’s body. Trickling from one reality to another, heat pooled in her belly.

 _Garcia moved back up her body, settling between her legs as he kissed her._ Lorena straddled him and positioned his penis at her entrance. She sank down, _and he sank into her_ , and a tiny noise escaped his sleeping throat to match _the deep groan of satisfaction he dreamed of uttering. A sound that seemed to rise from the very tips of his toes._

_“That’s it,” she told him breathlessly. “That’s what we need to pull this off.”_

_Nodding, he pushed into and pulled out of her, every roll of his hips bringing them closer to parenthood,_ and she lifted herself up and rocked back down on him, building up to that new life with equal fervor. And in _both worlds, Lorena curled her fingers around his shoulders like her toes curled in pleasure, and held on for dear life._ His mouth fell open as she rode him, and he let out an incongruous snore. _But his muscles rippled under her hands as he moved inside her, his movements smooth and deliberate._

 _He touched her belly and whispered:_ We’re going to have a baby.

_“Only if you put it there,” she whispered back cheekily._

_Grinning, he kissed her. His thrusts came harder, sank deeper,_ and she rode him harder, faster. His head lolled limply on the pillow from the force of her movements. _He looked at her like she was the most lovely creature he’d ever seen. She could read fuzzy fantasies in his eyes of her body changing as a seed he’d planted there grew and flourished. Blooming into their daughter; the both of them combined to form something – some_ one _– all her own. The pleasure between them grew and grew,_ thickening like a storm cloud, bringing them closer _to that new life they craved with every swivel of their hips._

Lorena came with a cry, clenching around him dreaming and awake. _The tightening of her walls set Garcia off too, and the entire dream dissolved with his climax. The honeymoon suite melted back into their little hand-dreamed bedroom, the rose petals flying around them and apart as if tossed by a violent wind,_ and he jolted awake with a gasp, spurting inside her. For several long moments, he emptied himself into her trembling body with panting groans. She braced herself unsteadily on his chest, the orgasmic spasms of her muscles and the heat flooding her womb draining her of anything that wasn’t pleasure.

Eventually that wonderful, debilitating wave subsided, and she collapsed beside him, his member slipping out of her. They stared at each other as they caught their breaths.

“Wow,” she said eventually.

He reached down, dragged his fingers through the wet mess between her thighs, and held them up to the light. “That was a first.”

“A good sign,” Lorena said. With a kiss to his shoulder, she snuggled up to him, cold without her clothes. “I have a good feeling about this.”

“Me too,” Garcia said, and placed a kiss atop her hair. “Me too.”

**– 3**

_Gunshots in the night._

_A little girl –_ their _little girl, their_ daughter _– toddling unsteadily around a cozy living room on chubby little legs. Crowing with delight as she chased after Garcia. Lorena hovering behind, encouraging her and ready to catch her should she fall._

_A balcony. A mother with Garcia’s green eyes, and a son with his dark hair. He in between them, telling her, “Every memory I have of you, you were always sad. And I know what it’s like to lose a child. I didn’t want to let you lose yours. Not if I could change it.”_

_A blond man in a suit holding a gun on them. Lorena holding a gun of her own on him._

_The woman, frightened and confused: “What?”_

_“It was good to see you again,” he said, and then Lorena squeezed off a shot at the blond, and they vaulted the balcony railing one by one._

_The blond rushed over to the railing and looked down, but they were gone. Disappeared into thin air, like they’d never been there at all._

_Lorena taking the girl, a teenager this time, shopping for a nice dress to wear to her first Real, Serious, capital-D Date. Garcia dragging her from one secondhand shop to another, because he’d promised her a record player for her birthday and by golly, he would find her a record player. The three of them going to see a scary movie together, and the girl being the only one who didn’t scream or jump in her seat once, sedately munching popcorn the entire way through._

_Lorena in the appearance of a blonde woman with sharp brown eyes. Riding the man with the gun, who caressed her breast with one hand and clutched her waist with the other. A bedroom she knew because_ he _knew it, the closest thing he’d ever felt he had to a home._

Jess, _he groaned._ Jess, I’m so sorry, please come back.

_“Awful things have happened to her,” Lorena murmured, gaze turning inward even as she cupped the man’s face consolingly. “One thing in this timeline, and so many other things in so many others. Her reality is constantly in flux.”_

I love you, Jess, I love you. Let me make it right, _the man sobbed._

_“Wyatt,” Lorena said. “Wyatt!”_

_She grasped his chin and made him look at her. At_ her _, not the form his sleeping mind had placed on her. Crouched over him in the dark, cold-weather clothes she’d climbed into her sleeping bag beside Garcia in. Wyatt’s eyes widened._

Flynn?!

_“What we’re doing can help you save Jessica too, Wyatt. But you have to let us.”_

_Their baby at maybe seven or eight years old, sitting at the kitchen table in the sun, helping Garcia make cookies with a cobbled-together set of cutters. All of them different sizes and materials, all of them shaped like different flowers. At the other end of the table rested a drawing of their little family in a flowery field, surrounded by smiling bees and butterflies, and with ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ scribbled at the top._

_Garcia peeled a strip of excess cookie dough from the baking sheet, winked at their daughter, and stuck it in his mouth. Giggling, she followed his example._

_“No,” a black guy in an old-fashioned suit said emphatically. “Sorry to burst your psychotic little bubble, but that’s not possible. That’s not how_ any _of this works!”_

_“Reality just isn’t as inflexible as you think it is, Rufus,” Lorena said with a shrug._

_“I would’ve thought you of all people would know that,” Garcia teased._

_“No, I know how freaking_ hard _it was to bend and manipulate the laws of physics as much as we have, which is why_ I of all people _know better than to believe any of the fairytale bullshit you’re spewing.”_

_“Rude,” Lorena and Garcia said in unison._

_Their daughter on the cusp of adolescence, bent over her homework. Lorena’s arm over the back of her chair as she leaned in close and explained a particularly tricky problem._

_Garcia, wearing another man’s body as he languidly thrust into a pale-skinned woman with a fall of dark hair. A bed in a place it shouldn’t be, in a house that had once been familiar but now was all wrong. She gripped his shoulders as if keeping him as close as possible would tell her everything she ought to remember about him but didn’t._

I don’t even know you, _she gasped._

_“We can help you with that.”_

I don’t even know your last name! _she whined, burying her face in his shoulder._ We’re getting married and I don’t have anything with your full name on it anywhere?!

_“I admire how doggedly you’ve latched on to that issue even in sleep. But I mean it, Lucy: just say the word. We owe you a great debt.”_

Flynn? _she whispered. Something began to stir._ Noah... Flynn?

_“Not Noah. Garcia.”_

_He rolled off her and settled by her side. Lucy opened her eyes, and he didn’t even have to push the other man’s guise away. She did that herself, and held onto his shoulders all the more firmly._

Where’s your wife? _she asked._

_“You only had room for one hitchhiker.”_

You two are terrifying, _she said._ Paperwork can be forged, but nothing else about you makes any sense either.

_He grinned. “You don’t seem terrified.”_

_She climbed on top of him._ Brains process fears and anxieties in all kinds of weird ways. I read an article about it last year.

_“Ah. Should I call Lorena, then?” he asked, amused. She sank down on him, and pleasure spread through them both._

Yes.

_Their little girl as a grown woman again. The ring on her finger, the wife by her side, and her belly round and proud. Coming over to show off her ultrasound pictures. Lorena and Garcia started crying, which set her off too, and the wife most of all._

_“I just still can’t believe the baby’s mine, just like_ that _,” she blubbered happily, snapping her fingers. “And you’ve gone and taken all the hyperbolic power out of ‘it’s like a dream come true’, too, so thanks for that!”_

_Lorena drew their daughter and daughter-in-law into a hug, and Garcia wrapped his longer arms around all three of them, and they laughed until they cried and cried until they laughed again._

_“I’m Jiya,” a young woman was saying, as if the answer was startled out of her. Her eyes were huge and dark and saw things no other human had before. “What_ are _you?”_

_Garcia and Lorena exchanged a look._

_“Parents,” he said. “That’s all that matters. We’re parents.”_

_“We created a miracle, and it’s our job to nurture and protect it. She was meant to live a long, happy life, and we’re going to give that future back to her,” she said._

_Garcia skulking into a deep, wall-to-wall closet, far too large yet for the little clothes hanging from the rack. His weapon raised and his soldier’s form perfect. Giving a deadly serious “all clear” – and then turning around and squirting water from the little blue plastic gun._

_“No monsters,” he promised with a nose-crinkling smile. “It’s safe to go to sleep, okay?”_

_“But I’m not tired,” their little miracle said, and as Garcia joined them on the bed, Lorena said, grinning, “Oh, what else is new.”_

_“But what if the monsters come when I’m sleeping?” the girl insisted._

_“Well, then we’ll protect you, okay?” he said. He stroked her sleep-flushed cheek and thumbed her little nose, and Lorena pressed a kiss to her silky hair. “Mama and I will always protect you.”_

They startled awake, hearts thumping heavily, breaking and bursting at the same time.

Lorena sat up. “Did you see that?”

Pushing himself upright too, he nodded.

“She’ll be beautiful.” Lorena covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “But she won’t be _safe_.”

“Whoever those monsters are, they’re going to make us fight for her,” Garcia said slowly, gravely. “Of course there’s a price to pay, dammit. _Of course._ ”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“You know,” Lorena said, voice dangerously soft. “All my earliest memories, from before I became _me_ , are of nightmares. I’d be the mistress some guy was fucking when his wife came home, and who kept fucking him while she stood over us and yelled at him. Or the daughter who’d turn out to be a lesbian, so he’d ‘have to’ kick her out of the house. Or the sister sleeping with a westerner, so he’d ‘have to’ kill her to preserve the family honor. The girlfriend who’d find out what he’d been doing to her children and get him thrown in jail, and watch as the inmates did the same to him. The date who turned the tables on him. Always something new, but always the same. Awful men and their guilty consciences.”

He cupped her cheek, sorrow in his eyes.

“Once I found myself in control of what happened to me, I never wanted to go near another dream like that again,” she said. Then her mouth hardened. “But I was born from them. And if anyone ever tries to take her from us, I swear I’ll be their worst nightmare.”

Eyes growing dark, Garcia nodded. “It’s curious, though. That woman with the son, she’s in all of _my_ earliest memories. The boy died. She dreamed of him every night, drowning in her grief. I was him – Gabriel – for years, until finally her dreams began to change. The last time I saw her, she gave me a new name, because she said I was nothing like Gabriel anymore, and she told me it was time for me to be free. Next dream I know, I was a man for the first time. It still took me a long time to wake up and _become_ after that, but...”

“She was like your mother,” Lorena said wonderingly. She snickered. “So she’s the one who gave you a last name for a first name?”

“Yeah, well, you know the one big thing we can’t do for them while they’re asleep is activate their critical thinking skills,” he said fondly. “And technically, since it was my _only_ name, it wasn’t a _first_ name until the two of us decided to take a shared last name. But Lorena, this was decades ago. If she’s still out there now, there’s no way she’d still look just like I remember her. And keeping Gabriel from dying? Even we can’t change yesterday’s dreams.”

“That didn’t look like a dream to me. Everybody there was flesh and blood.”

They went back to staring at each other.

Eventually Lorena said: “You know, having these visions is great and all, but it’s making me realize I’m an incredibly impatient person. I’m going to hate being presented with these future mysteries _now_ , forever.”

Garcia laughed. “That makes two of us.”

**– 4**

“Sleep,” he murmured, passing a hand over her eyes, and she slept.

She was so beautiful. And more real and human every day. This face and this body suited her. It made her so happy to have them, he hoped she’d get to stay like this forever.

He pressed his forehead to hers, let part of himself fall into her slumber, _and took in the surroundings of her dream. It was a cold and stormy autumn night. Harsh winds rattled the windowpanes and shadows moved behind the glass. But a fire burned in the hearth, forcing the chill and darkness back until only the furthest corners of the cozy room still felt them._

The part of him still awake ran his hands down her sides. He could feel the muted warmth of her through her pyjama top, and the near-blaze of sleepy body heat when he slipped his hands under her top to touch skin-to-skin. He left her top where it was. Traced a thumb along her soft nipple and gripped her waist beneath the increasingly real fabric; could almost feel the individual threads it was woven from brush along the backs of his hands. Her sleeping self wouldn’t notice, but _he_ would feel bad if she got cold.

_Lorena stood in front of the fire. Her hands on her belly; big and round with the child they were making. She turned when she heard his footsteps and beamed._

_“That’s her,” he breathed, placing his hands over hers. “Our baby.”_

I’m huge! _she said gleefully. She grabbed his face in both hands and pulled him into a hungry kiss._

The bottoms had to go, however, difficult though it was to remove them from her unresponsive legs. When he first pulled, he pulled her head from the pillow as her whole body slid limply down the bed. He couldn’t help but laugh joyfully at all the steps and challenges it took. The ingenuity required to do anything while awake! It was invigorating. With an arm wrapped around her pliant waist to lift her behind from the bed, he finally got her pyjama pants off.

 _She turned them around and pushed him down onto the fur rug before the fire. The rug absorbed his impact; it didn’t hurt any more than landing on a bed. Lorena crawled over him. Garcia grabbed her hips and drew her closer._ He settled between her legs and pulled the blankets over them both. _She pulled her sweater over her head, her belly filling much of his vision, while he drew her pants down her hips. When_ his _hips, between her knees, prevented him from pulling them down any further, they simply faded away, as solutions and obstacles both tended to do in dreams._

 _Reaching between them, she found him already hard. Liquid pleasure filled him as her wet heat engulfed him._ But he didn’t press into her yet. Didn’t want her to wake up sore because he’d gone too fast, and without her input there was no guarantee she wouldn’t, these days. Instead, propping himself up over her sleeping form, he brought his thumb to her clit and rubbed gently. _Lips parted and eyes closed, Lorena moved. He caressed her belly. Couldn’t keep his hands off of the little life they were making together._

_“I could look at you like this forever,” he said._

_Who needs to look? I can_ feel _it,_ she said. _Can’t you?_

He slipped a finger into her she wasn’t awake to feel and, _pushing his senses beyond their physical boundaries,_ gasped.

 _“Yes,” he breathed. And it wasn’t just in her, it was both of them. In this dream_ , in their almost-real bedroom, even in the physical reality beyond that. _It throbbed like a heartbeat and grew with every ounce of love and desire they poured in._

 _She drew him up for a kiss. Wrapping his arms around her, he surged into it._ He added a second finger and pumped languidly _as she rode him. The belly kept him from pressing himself flush against her, but he could latch his mouth onto a nipple and lave at her swollen breasts with his tongue._ A third finger. Her breath hitched, and _she sighed and whimpered in delight, her hands in his hair, as he met her movements with his own. Orgasm came quickly and easily that night. She shuddered atop him and clenched around him,_ and his fingers slid comfortably in and out of her hot, slick body.

He removed his hand and positioned his member to her entrance instead. Her head had rolled to the side, turned away from him. Her sleeping face showed nothing of what was happening. Not when he spread her unresisting thighs further; not when he cupped her chin, tilted her face up toward his, and kissed her slack mouth; not when he fed himself into her wetness and filled her up.

 _She pushed him back onto the rug with both hands on his shoulders, and said:_ Now you.

 _Her hips moved again,_ unknowingly matched to the rhythm of his. Asleep _and aware, she felt so good. She pulled up and sank down on him just the way he needed it, warm and snug and quick._ He had to hold onto her hip to keep from shoving her across the bed like a rag doll with every thrust, _and her milk-heavy breasts bounced with every jerk of her hips. She dragged her hands down his bare chest,_ and he pressed his thumb to her clit again.

 _Lorena came again with a cry,_ her eyes flying open with a gasp. Her body tightened and fluttered around him _twice over,_ and Garcia’s hips sped up, his thrusts growing harder and deeper _as he bucked up into her_ and rubbed her more vigorously. Still weak and uncoordinated with sleep, her hands scrabbled for purchase around his shoulders _as she ground her hips down against his until the last of the dream faded away; her round belly and the warmth of the fire and the howling of the storm,_ blinking away one by one.

All that remained was him, her, and the promise growing between them, a little more alive all the time.

Garcia pressed his hand to Lorena’s cheek until her eyes focused on him, clear and lucid. She gave him a tired grin – and then a whine and a pout as he pulled out of her, soft and spent.

“Where are my pants?” she croaked.

He helped her back into her pants, and she cleaned both of them up.

“It’s working,” he stage-whispered in her ear as he pulled her close afterwards.

“I know.” She squeezed his waist and tilted her head up along his chest. Her eyes looked unbearably soft and bright. “She’ll get here. And we’ll protect her. She’ll grow up, and we’ll get to love her and watch her do all those things we dreamed of and more.”

“We’ll be around to watch her become a proud _grandmother_ ,” he promised her, and himself, and their unborn child.

And they would. But that night, they simply slept.

**– 5**

_A white house, near an ocean. Too far away to see it, but close enough to smell the salt on the breeze. The house was old, full of antique flourishes, but well-maintained, the antique foibles expertly modernized away. A baby swing seat hung from one of the property’s many bent and wizened but lushly spring-green trees, and a plastic toy push cart was parked in a corner of the porch._

_Their name was on a plaque beside the driveway._ ‘Flynn.’ _For all to see._

_A car pulled up. Lorena and Garcia got out, their sleeping daughter in his arms._

_“Home sweet home,” Lorena whispered, closing the driver side door gently so the baby wouldn’t wake._

_It didn’t work. But Garcia managed to distract her from making a ruckus about being woken up, and got her giggling instead. They looked at each other with tired eyes but fond smiles, and let themselves inside the house to the tune of the little one’s laughter._

**\+ 1**

They were awoken by a baby’s cries.

A baby laying in the gap between their pillows, swaddled in a flower-print blanket. She was still pink and puffy and wrinkled – like an actual newborn. And her lungs were definitely no figment of the imagination.

She was real. A living, flesh-and-blood baby. She was really there. They were really parents.

Lorena and Garcia looked at each other, too overcome with emotion to speak. She sat up and took their daughter in her arms, and Garcia pressed up close, one arm around Lorena and one around the baby.

The girl’s wails tapered off. She blinked her little eyes open and squinted up at them. Could babies normally see properly yet, this early on? Neither of them was sure, but there was no question their baby girl had been born with the benefit of that doubt. Her gaze wandered between her mother and her father, and she cooed happily.

Lorena found her own vision growing blurry and her lips parting in a face-splitting grin. Garcia laughed and wiped futilely at his own tears.

“She has your eyes.”

“She has your hair.”

“Would you look at that,” Lorena breathed, meeting his eyes. “Just _look_ at that.”

“We did it!” he said, and pulled her in for a hard, ecstatic kiss.

No longer the center of attention, the baby promptly started crying again.

This time, when they looked at each other, it was with a hint of panic. Happy panic! Panic so sweet they’d never imagined it could exist! But panic.

“She needs a home. Are we supposed to find that house we kept seeing or dream it up? Can we create real places? This bedroom still isn’t real, and we’ve been here for ages. And she needs food. And a legal identity. And a doctor’s appointment,” Garcia rattled off, rattled. “Right? We should have a doctor check we didn’t accidentally give her some kind of life-threatening congenital defect.”

“I can provide food... I think?” Lorena said, looking down at her chest as she awkwardly rocked the baby. Already she was calming down again. “I’m pretty sure I can lactate, at any rate.”

“And she needs a name,” Garcia remembered belatedly. “Did you hear her name in any of the visions?”

“No. Guess we decide that for ourselves,” Lorena said. “Though she was surrounded by so many flowers all the time, I think I have an inkling already. Daisy?”

Garcia made a face. “I’ve never liked that name. Carnation?”

Lorena gave him a mock-pitying look. “Oh, honey, that mother of yours completely ruined you for this game, didn’t she? How about Lily?”

“Snapdragon?” Garcia suggested, grinning.

“Rose.”

“Thorny.”

“Heather.”

“Anemone.”

“Poppy.”

“Belladonna.”

“Clover.”

“Foxglove.

“Lavender.”

“Chamomile.”

“Violet, Fleur, Marigold, Jasmine, Holly, Ivy...” Lorena went on.

Then:

“Iris,” they said in unison.

“That’s it,” Garcia said with quiet, elated wonder. “Her name is Iris.”

“Iris Flynn,” Lorena murmured, looking down at their little girl in adoration. “Yep. That’s her.”

They’d thought they’d loved her before, but now that she was in their arms, warm and heavy and noisy and real, their hearts couldn’t contain the tenderness and affection they felt.

Garcia slid off the bed and helped Lorena up, baby Iris in her arms. They looked around the room they’d lived in for so long, with its ever-shifting decor and fuzzy edges. A sheltered, nurturing bubble in and of their own, intertwined minds, keeping them lively and aware through crucial stages of their growth into people, even if days and weeks and months went by without any ventures into the dreams of others. A tiny little world, just for the two of them; all the world they’d ever needed.

Until now. They couldn’t raise Iris here. They had outgrown their bubble. It was time to leave it and join the world they’d only ever dreamed of before. To move on to their next stage of existence.

The bedroom door, which they knew led nowhere and had thus never touched, swung open.

They looked at each other and smiled. Lorena held Iris to her chest and Garcia wrapped his arm around her waist, and together, they stepped outside.


End file.
